Palladium - High Five

Written by Nicki Tibballs | Sunday, November 18, 2007 |

If you took every musical guilty pleasure known to man, and rolled it into one, dubiously-dressed bundle, the end result would no doubt resemble Palladium. The four session musicians who make up the new Feeling (surely one is enough?) formed in September 2006. The improbably-named Peter Pepper is Palladium’s vocalist and bassist, and is also known to wear PVC trousers onstage. Golf visor-wearing Rufio Sandilands plays keyboards, Rostas Fez is the guitarist and Rocky (yes, Rocky!) Morris plays drums.

Palladium are a band who have caused a massive split between music lovers. The indie scenesters are (unsurprisingly) laughing at them and their cheesy pop-rock, while others (quite possibly your parents) are embracing the catchy choruses and familiar sounds of their record collections. The band readily admits that they’re “not aiming for a specific audience, we’re just aiming for everyone.” And no doubt they will be massive. Commercial radio stations will love them as much as they already love Maroon 5 and Mika, with whom Palladium are touring. Not really a surprise, is it, that one of the most flamboyant and over-played singers should want a flamboyant and soon-to-be over-played band supporting him.

Considering the band have only released two singles to date - July’s debut ‘Happy Hour’ was met with mixed reviews, and new single ‘High 5′ is likely to fare the same - they certainly seem to be getting people talking. The Guardian describes them as “queasy listening”, while other journalists say that they’re just what the current music scene has been missing. They have finished recording their forthcoming debut album with Tony Hoffer, who has previously been held responsible for The Kooks and The Fratellis.

‘High 5′ is about stealing a girl from an undeserving man and Pepper’s voice manages to sound so smugly irritating throughout the entire song that you’d actually quite like to ram the CD down his throat to shut him up. The track starts off sounding alarmingly like an 80’s power ballad - and continues in that vein for the entire song. While the band are clearly very accomplished musicians, the lyrics are nothing special. The inexcusably cringeworthy line “I’m gonna make sweet love to her tonight” should not be used in any song. Ever. I can’t help feeling sorry for the girl and think she’d be best off without either of them - her boyfriend sounds like a complete idiot, and Pepper comes across as too smug for his own good.

Palladium have said in interviews that “we don’t have our own record collections, we just listen to our dads’.” That is obvious from the music. No doubt, they will be hugely successful for a while, until we decide that we all have enough guilty pleasures already, and we really don’t want any more. To quote the chorus of ‘High 5′ “she can’t take her eyes off me/and he’s wondering why”. Maybe it’s the PVC trousers?

Palladium Website
Palladium Myspace

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